“I’d settle for sweatpants,” he adds, gesturing toward the knee-length shorts he hasn’t bothered to change out of. “Breathable fabric, zero warmth.” He grins like a fucking champ through the chill. Then again, who would want to shop at a warm grocery store? “How’re your wrists feeling, Mrs. Crawford?” She had complained of wrist strains―a common injury for beginners who put too much weight in their arms. He’s had to do research to make the cover believable, of course, but that much he knows just from his training days.
“You’ll quickly learn that shorts are the kiss of death around these parts,” Kiara chuckles as she glances at the thin nylon of his shorts.Turning to his next query, she smiles, mildly surprised that he had managed to remember her earlier complaints of wrist strain, “Oh, they’re doing much better! I’ve been icing them just like you suggested and it’s actually helped a lot...I take it you must have a lot of experience with these sort of things...”
“Perhaps you can, Ms. Crawfords. That would be best for frozen condiments.” he offered her a small smile. there was something about kiara; they never spoke much, and robbie always allegated this avoidance to his usual people avoidance (or even her general closeness to lawyers that’d come in the station and demand release of main suspects), but he could see it now. how the cold light of the fridge reflected on the woman’s face, the way her dimples showed as she smiled. she reminded him of selina. long brown hair, tall and elegant.
“just some … family recipe, i guess.” the words left his mouth and once again, he wondered why he even spoke. he should’ve just … leave. let her alone musing about eggs and temperature. he didn’t even know what he wanted to cook tonight. he felt a pang of nostalgia, thinking about family recipes. it’s been awhile since he cooked something remotely traditional. he thinks about the way selina used to make food with the kids, laugh at him for being such a clutch in the kitchen. he forced his favourite people-pleaser smile and held on the eggs. “and you Ms. Crawfords? Preparing for the big upcoming event?”
Kiara can’t help but chuckle at his response and shrug haphazardly. She’s a picky woman, she’s aware of that much, but she also sure that she couldn’t imagine living any other way. To be content was to settle for mediocrity and was determined to Kiara never settle.
“Oh, a family recipe-- that’s lovely,” Kiara smiles genuinely. She had her own share of family recipes, though her mother wasn’t exactly the stellar cook that she was. Kiara liked to think that she would develop her own family recipes, ones that she hoped would be passed down her future generations. “You’ll definitely have to send it my way some day...”
“Tonight I’m just focusing on dinner for the kids, but I’m certainly excited for The Spring Celebration,” she replies, “It’s probably my favorite Wade tradition.”
grocery stores were a nightmare for robbie. he usually went after the end of his shift, early in the morning. where no one was there. but after a difficult and longer shift, he went straight home for a quick nap. then it was time to run errands. and he knew he’d have another nap after this trip. god, he was already looking for it. “better that than warm milk and expired eggs, i guess.” he offered a small smile.
he did bite the snarky remark on the tip of his tongue. mrs. crawford was not someone you wanted against you. even if you were a bit cranky. he was just a mere deputy, her entire entourage were lawyers. it would be incredibly dumb to get on her bad side. and robbie was not incredibly dumb. just incredibly grumpy.
“you mind if i get some as well?” he pointed in front of her. if he were to extend his arm and reach out around herto get to the eggs, they would get extremely too close for his comfort.
“I suppose freezing to death is preferable to warm milk and expired eggs,” Kiara digresses, only slightly sarcastically. She perhaps was a touch melodramatic, but that did little to reduce her value of the quality of her cooking ingredients. “Perhaps I can be amiable with the temperature for the sake of good dinner supplies,” she muses humorously.
“Oh, not at all,” Kiara smiles warmly, leaning forward and grabbing the eggs before handing them over to Robbie. “You cooking anything special tonight, Deputy Rivera?” she asks, with a slight smile as she examines the remaining eggs to select the perfect dozen.
@kiaracrawfords
Shiloh pulled at the nylon strap to her cheap and abused book bag when the Crawford house came into view, yanking it over her head and resting it on a shoulder to free both of her hands while she climbed the porch steps. It was a perfectly respectable home, appropriate for the “IT” mom of Wade, Illinois, arguably middle america’s best breeder of young mothers.
She knocked just loud enough to be heard and took an immediate step back to put a little space between her and the door, gaze wandering to the flowerpots outside and then down to the soil they lived in: fresh and damp, recently tended to. She shouldn’t have doubted it, Kiara seemed like the unbelievably competent type, the kind that could juggle three children and two bake sales and do it with a smile. It would almost be intimidating if she wasn’t such a warm person, at least when it came to welcoming Shiloh into her home.
That being said, Shiloh hadn’t known the woman long, and hadn’t gotten much of a chance to know more beyond offering her daughter Arielle spotty-at-best sign language lessons for an hour or so at a time. The door swung open after a few long seconds and Shiloh looked up with a small, tight-lipped smile, hands still holding the strap across her chest.
It was their second or third lesson, but Shiloh still felt wildly out of place knocking on Kiara Crawford’s door, and to teach, no less.
“–Morning,” like always her greeting was more of an afterthought, coming only after the few stalled moments it took Shiloh to realize she should be the first person to speak. She glanced at her watch to avoid staring too much ( she’d always been told it was a creepy habit ) and noticed too late that she was nearly twenty minutes earlier than usual. “Sorry, is Arielle awake yet?”
There was little Kiara wouldn’t do for her daughter including reaching out to a practical stranger for signing classes the moment her daughter demonstrated mild interest in learning something new. Needless to say, shame, was not something that could be easily associated with Kiara Crawford. (And frankly, 'no’ wasn’t an answer Kiara received often). In truth, she had learned of Shiloh’s background through the Wade grapevine and decided to reach out a set up a few lessons.
As far as Kiara was concerned, Shiloh was a sweet woman, a born-and-bred daughter of Wade. Perhaps she was a little shy, if not a little odd, but Kiara could make conversation for ten, so really, it was a non-issue.
“Oh, Shiloh!” Kiara greets with mild surprise, glancing towards the wall clock that hung near the doorway to reconfirm the time. Turning back to the woman before her, she smiles, moving forward relatively unfazed by the other’s women earliness.
“Ari is just finishing up her breakfast, but fair warning, I got her a book on ASL from the library earlier this week and she rather ironically, won’t stop talking about it,” Kiara grinned opening the door a little wider for Shiloh to enter the Crawford residence and guided her through the hall way.
“But please, come to the kitchen! Can I get you anything to eat? I made raspberry pancakes and I would hate to let the extra batter go to waste.”
Daniel liked to walk (or bike) whenever possible. It wasn’t so much an environmental thing, though he supposed maybe it should be– he just had never lived in a town small enough to actually walk to the convenience store or bike to work. Daniel’s students had a running gag that he was “too poor to buy a car.” He didn’t bother correcting them; it was too entertaining.
Usually walking places wasn’t a bad idea, but today it was. Daniel ended up getting too much at the grocery store and was struggling to balance the bags when he saw a familiar face. “I hate to ask, but– could I get a ride?” He smiled apologetically. “Didn’t do the math correctly– I was never very good at numbers.”
“Oh, of course, Mr. DePalma, no worries, I was always more of an English gal, myself,” Kiara smiles broadly, recognizing the man from the high school as she exited the store and pulled her relatively empty cart over for him to place his bags in. “My car is just down there,” she says motioning a few spots down.
“So, how’s has your year been? It’s been forever such we last chatted,” she grins good-naturedly as she opens up the trunk of her Escalade and places her own two bags in, “I do hope the Seniors aren’t giving too much trouble...” she chuckles lightly.
location: walker’s family market
status: open to all!
While she would normally have completed all her grocery shopping by the mid-morning after dropping her kids to school, PTA meetings regarding the upcoming bake sale had somehow managed to fill the majority of her day. Realizing she would be in need of a few more ingredients for dinner, Kiara decided to make a quick dash to the market, while her kids were still attending their after-school extracurriculars-- that is, gymnastics, soccer, and art, respectively.
“God, this place is freezing,” Kiara complains bitterly, “I didn’t realize I needed a fucking parka to grab for bread and eggs.”
THE DESPERATE HOUSEWIFE aka Kiara Crawford. 34 years old, the PTA President of your Nightmares & Stay-at-Home Mother of Three
Hi guys! I’m Rach and this is my bby Kiara-- I included her full bio below the cut, but long story short, Kiara’s been in Wade since she was kid. Her dad owns a big law-firm in the area which her husband also works for, so she’s got the $$$. She was quite the popular girl in high school and now she’s Kiara’s a stay-at-home mom of a daughter & twins. She’s also PTA president and is A LOT but really, she just wants a little love & respect for all that she does. Anyways, you can find more about here HERE & her wanted connections HERE. Hit me up for all the plots :D
Name: Kiara Monika Crawford (née Sunder)
Age & Gender & Pronouns: 34, Cisgender Female, She/Her
Character’s Occupation: Homemaker & Mother of Three & PTA President
Faceclaim: Deepika Padukone
Tw: implied racism
Kiara was born in Chicago; her father was a hot-shot lawyer and her mother was a writer for a Women’s magazine. A pair of immigrants, her parents had forged a new life for themselves in America, a life they could be proud of. When Kiara was 8, her parents decided they had enough of city-living and were ready to settle down in suburban paradise. They purchased a cookie-cutter house on the end of a quaint little cul de sac and soon Wade, Illinois became home, but Kiara couldn’t help but feel like a stranger in her own town. Wade lacked the certain diversity of Chicago that she had become accustomed to. The other girls made fun of her hair, of her food, of the way her parents talked and she grew desperate for the barbie blonde locks of the popular girls, to fit into this foreign new world that was only a hop away from the former city she called home.
It isn’t until her father decides it’s time he opens his own law firm and the Sunder family sees plenty of success that things begin to change. Like in most suburbias, money, as it turns out, speaks louder than anything else in Wade. By the time she’s in high school, Kiara is suddenly the girl with all the friends, the girl with a big, bright future. She is after all, the sophomore who’s dating the Evan Crawford, senior, captain of the football team, and hero of Wade Senior High. Eventually he goes away to college, but it’s a love story for the ages and he proposes to her the day she turns 18. They’re married by the time she turns 20 and at 22, Kiara has their first child. While her husband leaves to attend law school in the city, Kiara dutifully stays at home changing diapers, cleaning the house, and baking apple pies on the weekends he’d come home. He promises her that they’ll leave Wade one day and make a life for themselves somewhere else, but when Kiara’s father offers Evan a position at his firm, it’s an offer he can’t turn down.
Realizing that Wade is all she’ll ever have, Kiara decides it’s time Wade becomes her own empire. She had done it in high school and she would do it again. She’s the youngest mother at every PTA meeting and somehow still the most vocal. She is, after all, Kiara Crawford, feared and loved in equal parts. She’s opinionated and fiercely so, and it’s not long before she talks her way into presidency (to which her husband responds, ‘that’s nice, dear’). Somewhere between the first child and the twins, they’ve lost the love in their marriage. Every now and then when she’s doing laundry, she catches the whiff of unfamiliar perfume on her husband’s collared-shirts and she’s more than clever enough to put the pieces together. Still, she bites her tongue and focuses her energy on what she can control– her family, her kingdom. Everyone in town knows Kiara Crawford, former Prom Queen, doting wife, and raging storm, should you cross her. Hurricane Kiara, they call her and it’s a more than apt nickname.
